“Yeah, but―”
“But?! Fuck me, Luca, I take back every joke I have ever made about Tav being possessive and over the top about defending you. You haven’t told anyone but him, have you?”
Luca snorted. “What, and let Jack win?”
“Let him win? Are you retarded? He! Has! A! Knife!”
“Yes, thank you, Aaron, I was there,” Luca snapped, folding the hasty note in half and shoving the pen back into Aaron’s hands. He slammed his locker and took off down the corridor at a brisk walk. “But just think for a minute, if someone’s fucked Jack up and he’s just lashing out because whoever did it was gay or a paedo or whatever―”
“So?! He’s a psycho!”
“And if he doesn’t sort out his fucked-uppery―”
“So not a word―”
“―then it’s not just gonna be me, is it, Az? It’ll be every even vaguely bisexual kid who ever walks past him in the street. I mean, Jesus, it’s a wonder he hasn’t gone after David, David’s as gay as gay gets without actually being gay! He’s nearly as gay as you!”
“Er, what?”
“Fuck off, Aaron, he likes sewing. He’s a flamer, even if he is heterosexual.” Luca turned the corner and lowered his voice. At the end of that corridor sat the staffroom, who would instantly hear students that should be in lessons. But just shy of it…
He halted outside the glass door, hearing the low murmur of voices inside. Judy Jones’ office. A nauseatingly sugary woman that Luca couldn’t stand—he’d been sent to her when he was twelve and his Aunt Jackie had died and he’d thrown a tray at another kid in the canteen for making a cancer joke, in a very Tav-esque fashion—but who was, more to the point, the school counsellor.
He tucked the note under the door, and turned tail.
“If he weren’t a belligerent twat—you know, before he gave me CPR and found out he kissed a queer,” Luca said in hushed tones as they hastily retreated, Aaron’s fingers back around his elbow. “Before then? He was alright. Bit quiet, but I…I kinda liked him. I think he needs…I dunno, I think he just needs help.”
“You want to help the guy who threatened to gut you?”
“Slit my throat, technically.”
“Fucking hell!”
“But…yeah?”
“You,” Aaron said seriously, “are the fucked up one. And by the way? Me ‘n’ Tav are gonna sort out a fucking guard or something because you have no sense of self-preservation, or…”
Luca let him rant, turning over the little hints Jack had inadvertently dropped in his head, and wondering.
Wondering if he’d done the right thing, and wondering if it would or could change anything at all.
Chapter 18: “You need to get serious.”
“You have to be fucking kidding me,” Luca said.
Aaron just folded his arms.
“Az.”
“If you’re waiting,” Aaron said ruthlessly, “then I’m waiting.”
“Oh come on,” Luca whined. “It’s school!”
“And there’s nobody here once classes let out,” Aaron retorted. “Me an’ Tav made a deal, and you can just shut the fuck up and go with it, Luca.”
“Else what?”
“Er, else I’m not as fucking stupid as you are, and I will tell every adult I can find—including coppers—that Jack threatened you with a knife.”
Luca scowled. “Cops won’t do owt anyway.”
“I’ll tell your mam.”
Luca narrowed his eyes until they were nearly slits. He didn’t know who to kill first—Aaron, for being a tit, or Tav for making a deal with a tit.
But then, he couldn’t risk Aaron actually telling Mamma and sending the entire family into uproar, so Luca huffed and pulled himself to sit up on the wall by the gates.
“Fine,” he said.
Aaron relaxed, and jumped up beside him. Their feet swung in time in the cold afternoon sun, the sky already dimming, and Luca watched their shadows shift.
“Luc.”
Luca rolled his eyes. “What.”
“Why won’t you tell anyone?”
“Because it’s not―”
“If you say serious, I’m gonna smack you.”
Luca pulled another face. “Jack’s not…like, you remember that kid in Year Seven, Travis? Big ugly face, used to bully anyone who got near him just ‘cause he thought it was funny?”
“Yeah, ‘til your Tav got in a fight with him and he was too gutless to come back to school.”
Luca sniggered.
“Luc.”
“Fuck me, you’re boring,” Luca complained. Aaron just levelled him with a look. “And you look like your mam.”
“Leave my mam out of this.”
“Whatever. My point is, Travis just did it ‘cause he got a boner for it.”
“Eurgh, Luc. C’mon. That’s grim.”
“But there’s something up with Jack,” Luca pressed. “I reckon he’s been touched up or something. He’s actually afraid of queers.”
“Nobody’s actually afraid of gay people.”
“He is.”
“Best gaydar ever then, does he just run away screaming when random strangers get near him?”
“I dunno, maybe. I’m not saying it’s rational,” Luca insisted. “He was alright before he found out me an’ Tav are a thing. But he’s like…there’s some actual shitty experience with someone. It’s not totally just him being an ignorant twat.”
“It is him being an ignorant twat, because if he had two brain cells to rub together, he’d realise you’re a total pussy and it’s Tav that’s the fucking nutter,” Aaron retorted. “You’re easy, you’re a mamma’s boy—and hey, that’s cool, I’d be afraid of your mamma’s wrath, too, she’s fucking crazy, your mamma in a temper—but Tav’s like a nuclear missile with a crap guidance system―”
“Have you been going through your shit DVD collection again?”
“―and if Jack had half a brain, he’d not be bothered by you. Everyone’s bothered by Tav.”
“Not everyone.”
“Mate, your Tav makes me nervous, and I consider him a friend.”
Luca snorted. “Tav’s a pussy.”
“Tav’s a nutter.”
“No he’s not—he cuddles.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Cold mornings especially, he likes to―”
“I don’t want to know!” Aaron shouted, putting his hands over his ears. Luca snorted and grinned. “Fucking twat.”
“Why’s he a twat?”
The nutter in question had—finally—arrived, and Luca scowled at him. “You made a deal with Az?”
“What?” Tav said, stopping short. He eyed Luca warily, and Luca grumpily thought he bloody ought to.
“You’ve sic-ed a guard on me!”
“Well yeah,” Tav said, and Aaron made a ‘duh’ noise. “You’re too fucking stupid to report him, ‘course me and Aaron have teamed up.”
“I don’t need escorting everywhere.”
Tav shrugged. “Until he fucks off and leaves you alone, or you shop him in it to the cops proper, that’s what you’re getting. Deal with it.”
Luca glowered. It was, frankly, affording Jack too much legitimacy in his eyes. If he had been touched up by some pervy uncle or something, then he didn’t deserve to get criminalised and shit, he needed help. The cops weren’t shrinks, they’d just lock him up, and Luca had the uneasy feeling that Jack didn’t actually deserve that.
Plus, the way his hand had shook…nah. Luca’d just avoid him a bit more, and it’d be fine. This was overkill. Jack wasn’t freaking stalking him.
“He’s yours now,” Aaron said, sliding down off the wall. “I have a rehearsal.”
“No snogging?” Luca taunted.
“Nah,” Aaron said, and grinned. “Reckon I’ve learned enough about your gob for the time being.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Luca saw Tav’s eye twitch, and he smirked as he dropped down off the wall hims
elf and adjusted his bag on his shoulder. When Tav reached, Luca enacted punishment, and recoiled.
“Nuh-uh,” he said. “You fucking put the guard on me. I’m not some pussy girl.”
“Jack gets a knife near your balls, you might well be.”
“He wasn’t interested in my balls.”
“No, your neck, and that’s so much better,” Tav said sourly.
“You need to relax.”
“You need to get serious,” Tav snapped. His face was creased in a scowl, and Luca rolled his head back on his neck and sighed at the sky.
“Let’s not fucking fight about it,” he said wearily. “I’m sick of Jack being the centre of fucking everything.”
“Fine,” Tav said shortly. “Then get the bus with me. I have to go into the city centre and pick up some stuff for Mam at Wilko’s , and get Becky’s prescription from Boots.”
“Prescription?”
“Tonsillitis.”
“Fun,” Luca said. “Get some McDonald’s after and walk back via Clarkehouse Road and the gardens?”
“What, you wanna look at flowers?”
“No, I wanna lynch you from a tree and they’re suitably big in there.”
Tav made a noise like an angry cat, but then a vaguely fond smirk washed over his face and Luca deliberately relaxed his shoulders. This Jack crap would blow over, if he didn’t let Tav bring it up too often. And if shit got too bad, he supposed he could tell Antonio. Antonio wouldn’t go to the cops and drop Jack in it permanently, like, he’d just go and rearrange his face a bit.
“Why’re you here anyway?” Tav asked as they headed down the hill to the bus stops, and Luca decided—for the whole, you know, let’s-not-have-a-blazing-row effort—to let Tav’s not-subtle action of hooking his little finger around Luca’s slide.
“Swimming got cancelled.”
“Why?”
“Coach’s wife’s gone into labour. He’ll be back for Saturday’s session.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, again? He must have more kids’n your dad does.”
“He does. This is like…baby the eighth.”
“Fuck that. We’re never having kids.”
“Big presumption there, Tavistock—you’re a bit of fun until I find somebody better.”
“You keep sounding off, and yet here you are,” Tav said with a distinctly smug tone, so Luca deflated the ego by shoving him. He got shoved back and then, as they reached the stop, an arm slung over his shoulders and tightened around his neck in a weird half-hug, half-strangle.
“Lay off!”
“Nah.”
“You’re a twat.”
“You’re an idiot. All matches up, see.”
The more Luca mocked, the more relaxed Tav’s face got, so Luca kept bitching until the bus came, intent on making Tav forget all about Jack over the next few days. Maybe it would be prudent to skip a couple of swimming lessons and give Jack a bit of space, keep himself busy with running and Tav for a little while, and let everything blow over. Maybe let the school counsellor get things rolling and sort Jack out with therapy or whatever.
It was a calming plan, and it might have settled and worked if not for the fact, when the bus rolled up and Luca shoved Tav onto it, Jack himself was sitting halfway towards the back.
“The fuck’re you looking at?” Tav demanded, stopping in the aisle to scowl, and Luca groaned.
“Just move,” he said, pushing at Tav’s back.
Jack—sitting with some bloke in his fifties with the same build and the same angular face—scowled at him. Luca scowled back, and shoved again until Tav deigned to move, pushing him towards the back.
“Don’t start shit,” he said, steering Tav into a seat as far away from Jack as possible, and sitting to block him into the window seat.
“I won’t if he doesn’t.”
“Come off it, Tav, he’s with his dad or whoever, he’s not gonna start shit here.”
“Maybe I should fucking tell his dad then,” Tav said ruthlessly, “or maybe he’d be fucking proud of him, bet his dad’s just as much of a cunt.”
“Lower your voice,” Luca hissed, glancing up the bus at them. Jack was texting on his phone, head down. The man kept glancing back their way, expression blank. “Anyway, I don’t reckon that’s it, I told you, Jack’s not the average homophobic dick.”
“He’s a homophobic dick, s’all I care about, don’t give a fuck why,” Tav snarled.
Luca pulled a face. “I said I don’t want to fight about it today.”
“Don’t wanna fight with you.”
“Will you calm down?” Luca grumbled as his phone beeped and he shifted, half-standing to get it out of his pocket. When he sat back down, Tav’s arm had mysteriously found its way across the back of his seat, and his hand ended up on Luca’s waist. “Subtle.”
“Shut up,” Tav said, still staring intently at the back of Jack’s head. Luca grimaced and hoped that they got off at different stops, as he clicked through his phone menus to open the Facebook notification.
“I mean, it’d be nice if it wasn’t coming from your angry caveman side,” Luca continued blithely as the message loaded. “But I’ll take a hug when I can get it. And—what the―?”
“What the fuck?” Tav echoed angrily as the message opened. From Jack Collins, who had unfriended Luca pretty much immediately after the accident at the pool and hadn’t spoken to him on there beforehand anyway. And the new message was only four words long, but they were four words that made Luca’s stomach churn.
Stay away saturday, gayboy.
Tav’s arm tightened around Luca’s waist, and Luca clicked out of the message.
“Ignore it,” he said.
But he found himself at the back of Jack’s head, too, and wondering if ignoring it was going to be allowed—by Tav, or by Jack.
* * * *
“You’re doing it again.”
Tav’s lips didn’t even so much as pause. “Sorry,” he said, and he wasn’t. He kissed the scar again, and rubbed his lips down the length of it, letting the very tip of his tongue touch it.
“Hey.”
“Ssh.” It was nearly nine. They’d gone to town, Luca dragging Tav off the bus without letting him punch Jack in the fucking head until his skull cracked, and then Luca had just shrugged it all off like it was nothing. Just laughed and called Jack a twat and then insisted on going to HMV and checking out the boxsets for his collection.
And now it was nearly nine, and the room was too cold, because Mam had left the window open when she’d collected his dirty washing and taken the bin out again, but Tav didn’t mind. Luca’s back was hot beneath him, flushed and damp from their exertion, and his skin still faintly smelling of deodorant from the morning, and sex from the evening.
“Tav. Hey.”
“Ssh,” Tav murmured again, pressing his lips to the very top of the scar. It was two inches long, unpleasantly close to the spine and between those smooth shoulder blades. Thin and white. Mostly unnoticeable. But when Tav did notice, he liked to do this, just touch it and try it and smooth it over. Kiss it better, or something like that.
“Tav. M’okay, Tav.”
Tav swallowed, and opened his mouth to dampen the kisses. “Yeah.” For now. Luca could hold his own in a fight, Tav knew that. It didn’t stop the worry, though. You didn’t bring fists to a knife-fight.
“Tav…”
“Ssh,” Tav insisted, and slid his hands higher. His weight was pressing Luca into the mattress, and he splayed his fingers to rub open palms up that flat stomach until he hit a hard chest and the soft bumps of Luca’s nipples. Luca squirmed when Tav touched them, and Tav smiled against the scar. “You want me to pull out?”
“Mm.”
“‘Kay.” His lips never left the scar, even as he gently pulled out. Luca’s low grumble eased into a sigh when Tav rubbed at his chest again. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Gimme a minute.”
“S’cold,” Luca complained sleepily
when Tav slipped out of the sheets to throw the condom away, and the bed creaked like he was trying to turn over. Tav shot back, unwilling to lose his position, and pressed both hands into the backs of Luca’s shoulders.
“Stay there.”
“But it’s cold.”
“Not for long.” Tav slid back into the bed and settled back into place—chest to Luca’s back, arms tight around that wiry chest, one leg tucked between Luca’s knees. Luca twisted his face to the side and smiled, eyes closed and dark curls damp and rumpled from Tav’s attention.
“Better,” Luca mumbled when Tav kissed his ear, and sighed when Tav returned his mouth to that scar. “M’gonna sleep if you keep doin’ that.”
“What’s the word?” Tav whispered.
“Baci.”
“Ba-chi,” Tav echoed quietly, the sound still foreign and exotic even though he’d been hearing Italian for years now, and he pressed another kiss to the scar. He went from the bottom up this time, lips open and tongue tracing the groove of it.
Luca shifted to work a hand under himself and grasp Tav’s, his fingers sliding through Tav’s and squeezing tightly even as his breathing was evening out. “It’s okay.”
“I know.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Tav.”
“I know,” Tav whispered again, pulling the sheets higher when he felt the goosebumps beginning to push up under Luca’s skin. He returned his mouth to the scar, and nudged his nose lightly against the smooth skin above it. “Love you, Luca.”
Luca let go and twisted his arm, reaching. Tav leaned down to kiss him, their mouths sideways to each other and Luca’s fingers curling lightly in his hair. It was soft and familiar, the way Luca’s lips parted from his with that faint peeling sensation, the way Luca’s eyes were blown wide and dark, the way he blinked sleepily when Tav broke the kiss and pressed another peck to his jaw.
“Love you,” he whispered again, and returned to the scar, taking Luca’s hand again and squeezing until he felt Luca finally let go and drift away. Tav kept his mouth against that scar, and memorising the exact way Luca smelled and tasted and felt. Just like every time before, and every time they hadn’t had yet.
Nobody—and especially not Jack—was going to touch this.
The Italian Word for Kisses Page 17